The Tehran Initiative (2 page)

“You ready to move?” David asked, coming over to the passenger side.

“I think so,” Najjar said, his arms filled with the laptop and accessories.

“Good. Follow me.”

They walked north about a hundred meters. Then David turned, pulled out the .38, aimed at the gas tank of Najjar’s crumpled Fiat, and pulled the trigger. The car erupted in a massive ball of fire that not only obliterated the vehicle but all traces of their fingerprints and DNA as well.

“What was that for?” a stunned Najjar asked, shielding his eyes from the intense heat of the flames.

David smiled. “Insurance.”

* * *

David walked north down the center of Azizi Boulevard.

He limped his way past wrecked cars and distraught motorists fixated on the fire and smoke, with Najjar close behind. He clipped the police radio to his belt and put in the earphone. Just then, his phone vibrated. It was a text message from his CIA colleague, Eva Fischer, telling him to call their boss, Jack Zalinsky, in the secure mode. He did so right away, but it was Eva who actually picked up.

“Have you gone insane? The entire Global Operations Center is watching you via a Keyhole satellite. What are you doing?”

The chatter on the police radio suddenly intensified. “I can’t really talk now,” David said. “Do you need something?”

“I found you a plane,” she said. “It’ll be in Karaj tonight.”

Suddenly shots rang out, shattering a windshield beside them. Instinctively David hit the ground and pulled Najjar down with him between a Peugeot and a Chevy, dropping his phone as he did. People started screaming and running for cover. He could hear Eva yelling,
“What is that? What’s going on?”
but he had no time to respond. He grabbed the phone and jammed it into his pocket. Ordering Najjar to stay on the ground, he pulled the revolver and tried to get an angle on whoever was shooting at them.

Two more shots rang out, blowing out the windshield of the Peugeot. David again flattened himself to the ground and covered his head to protect himself from the flying glass. He could see under the cars that someone was moving toward him. He got up and took a peek. Another shot whizzed by him and ripped into the door of the Chevy.

Dead ahead, maybe ten yards away, was a garbage truck. David made sure Najjar was okay, then made a break for the back end of the truck. His movement drew more fire. But it also gave him a chance to see who was doing the shooting. The blue jacket and cap were the giveaway. This was a Tehran city police officer.

Then the officer’s voice crackled over the radio.

“Base, this is Unit 116. I’m at the crash site. One officer is down with multiple injuries. Witnesses say they saw someone steal the officer’s service revolver. I’m currently pursuing two suspects on foot. Shots fired. Requesting immediate backup.”

“Unit 116, this is Base—roger that. Backup en route. Stand by.”

This was not good. David crept along the side of the garbage truck, hoping to outflank the officer from the right, then stopped suddenly when he heard the sounds of crunching glass just a few yards ahead.

David tried to steady his breathing and carefully choose his next move as the footsteps got closer and closer. He could hear more sirens rapidly approaching. He was out of time. He took three steps and pivoted around the front of the truck, aimed the .38, and prepared to pull the trigger. But it was not the officer. It was a little girl, no more than six, shivering and scared.

How did she get here? Where is her mother?

Three more shots rang out. David dropped to the ground and covered the girl with his body. He took off his jacket and wrapped her in it, then got back in a crouch and tried to reacquire the officer in his sights.

But now there were two.

David had a clean shot at one of them, but he didn’t dare fire from right over the child. He broke right, hobbling for a blue sedan just ahead. Once again, gunfire erupted all around him. David barely got himself safely behind the sedan. He gritted his teeth and caught his breath, then popped his head up again to assess the situation. One of the officers was running straight toward David, while the other started running toward Najjar. David didn’t hesitate. He raised the revolver and squeezed off two rounds. The man collapsed to the ground no more than six yards from David’s position.

David had no time to lose. Adrenaline coursing through his system, he made his way to the first officer, grabbed the revolver from his hand, and sprinted toward the second officer. Racing through the maze of cars, he approached the garbage truck, stopped quickly, and glanced around the side. The second officer was waiting for him and fired. David pulled back, waited a beat, then looked again and fired.

The man fired three more times. David dove behind the Chevy, then flattened himself against the ground and fired under the car at the officer’s feet. One of the shots was a direct hit. The man fell to the ground, groaning in pain. David heard him radioing for help and giving his superiors David’s physical description. Then, before David realized what was happening, the officer crawled around the front of the Chevy, took aim at David’s head, and fired again. David instinctively leaned right but the shot grazed his left arm. He righted himself, took aim, and squeezed off two more rounds at the officer’s chest, killing the man instantly.

David’s mobile phone rang, but he ignored it. They had to get out of there. They couldn’t let themselves be caught. But Najjar was nowhere to be found.

Again his phone rang, but still he ignored it. Frantic, David searched for Najjar in, behind, and around car after car. This time, his phone vibrated. Furious, he checked the text message only to find this message from Eva:
3rd bldg on rt.

David suddenly got it. He glanced up in the sky, thankful for Eva and her team watching his back from two hundred miles up. He made his way up the street to the third apartment building on the right. His gun drawn, he slowly edged his way toward the entrance.

David risked a quick peek into the lobby.

Najjar was there, but he was not alone. On the marble floor next to him were the laptop and accessories. And in Najjar’s arms was the six-year-old girl from the street. He was trying to keep her warm and telling her everything would be all right.

David began to breathe again. “Didn’t I tell you not to move?”

“I didn’t want her to get hit,” Najjar said.

David wiped blood from his mouth. “We need to go.”

* * *

At the safe house, David dressed Najjar’s wounds.

Najjar ate a little and fell fast asleep. David unlocked a vault stacked with communications gear and uploaded everything on Dr. Saddaji’s laptop, external hard drive, and DVD-ROMs to Langley, with encrypted copies cc’d to Zalinsky and Fischer. Then he typed up his report of all that had happened so far and e-mailed the encrypted file to Zalinsky and Fischer as well.

At six the next morning, word came that the plane had arrived. David woke Najjar, loaded the computer equipment into a duffel bag, and took the bag and the scientist to the garage downstairs. Ten minutes later, they arrived at the edge of the private airfield.

David pointed to the Falcon 200 business jet on the tarmac. “There’s your ride,” he said.

“What about you?” Najjar asked. “You’re coming too, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“But if they find out you were connected to me, they will kill you.”

“That is why I have to stay.”

Najjar shook David’s hand and held it for a moment, then got out of the car, duffel bag in hand, and ran for the plane. David watched him go. He wished he could stay and watch the plane take off as the sun rose brilliantly in the east. But he couldn’t afford the risk. He had to dispose of the Renault he was now driving, steal another car, and get back to Tehran.

1

Islamabad, Pakistan

“I have come to reestablish the Caliphate.”

At any other time in history, such an utterance could have come only from the lips of a madman. But Muhammad Ibn Hasan Ibn Ali said it so matter-of-factly, and with such authority, that Iskander Farooq was tempted not to challenge the notion.

“I have come to bring peace and justice and to rule the earth with a rod of iron,” he continued. “This is why Allah sent me. He will reward those who submit. He will punish those who resist. But make no mistake, Iskander; in the end, every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that I am the Lord of the Age.”

The satellite reception was crystal clear. The voice of the Promised One—the Twelfth Imam, or Mahdi—was calm, his statements airtight, Iskander Farooq thought as he pressed the phone to his ear and paced back and forth along the veranda of his palace overlooking northeastern Islamabad. He knew what the Mahdi wanted, but every molecule in his body warned him not to accede to his demands. They were not presented as demands, of course, but that’s precisely what they were—and while the Mahdi made it all sound wise and reasonable, Farooq heard an edge of menace in the man’s tone, and this made him all the more wary.

The early morning air was bitterly and unusually cold. The sun had not yet risen over the pine trees and paper mulberries of the Margalla Hills, yet Farooq could already hear the chants of the masses less than a block away.
“Give praise to Imam al-Mahdi!”
they shouted again and again.
“Give praise to Imam al-Mahdi!”

A mere hundred tanks and a thousand soldiers and special police forces now protected the palace. Only they kept the crowds—estimated at over a quarter of a million Pakistanis—from storming the gates and seizing control. But how loyal were they? If the number of protesters doubled or tripled or worse by dawn, or by lunchtime, how much longer could he hold out? He had to make a decision quickly, Farooq knew, and yet the stakes could not be higher.

“What say you?” the Mahdi asked. “You owe me an answer.”

Iskander Farooq had no idea how to respond. As president of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the fifty-six-year-old former chemical engineer was horrified that Tehran had suddenly become the seat of a new Caliphate. Though the Mahdi had not formally declared the Iranian capital as the epicenter of the new Islamic kingdom, every Muslim around the world certainly suspected this announcement was coming soon. Farooq certainly did, and it infuriated him. Neither he, nor his father, nor his father’s father had ever trusted the Iranians. The Persian Empire had ruled his ancestors, stretching in its day from India in the east to Sudan and Ethiopia in the west. Now the Persians wanted to subjugate them all over again.

True, Iran’s shah had been the first world leader to formally recognize the independent state of Pakistan upon its declaration of independence in 1947. But it had been a brief window of friendliness. After Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had come to power in 1979, tensions between the two states had spiked. Khomeini had led an Islamic Revolution that was thoroughly Shia in all its complexions, and this had not sat well with the Pakistanis. Neither Farooq nor his closest advisors—nor anyone he had known growing up—had ever believed that the Twelfth Imam was coming to earth one day or that such a figure would actually be the Islamic messiah or that he would usher in the end of days, much less that Sunnis would end up joining a Caliphate led by him. Farooq’s teachers had all mocked and ridiculed such notions as the heresy of the Shias, and Farooq had rarely given the matter any thought.

Now what was he to believe? The Twelfth Imam was no longer some fable or myth, like Santa Claus for the pagans and Christians or the tooth fairy for children everywhere. Now the Mahdi—or someone claiming to be the Mahdi—was here on the planet. Now this so-called Promised One was taking the Islamic world by storm, electrifying the masses and instigating insurrections wherever his voice was heard.

More to the point, this “Mahdi” was now on the other end of this satellite phone call, requesting—or more accurately,
insisting upon
—Farooq’s fealty and that of his nation.

* * *

Syracuse, New York

David Shirazi faced the most difficult decision of his life.

On the one hand, despite being only twenty-five years old, he was one of only a handful of NOCs—nonofficial cover agents—in the Central Intelligence Agency who had an Iranian heritage. He was fluent in Farsi and had proven he could operate effectively and discreetly inside the Islamic Republic. He had no doubt, therefore, that he was about to be ordered to go back inside Iran within the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours, given how rapidly things were developing.

On the other hand, David simply wasn’t convinced that the American administration was serious about stopping Iran from building an arsenal of nuclear weapons or stopping the Twelfth Imam from using them. In his view, President William Jackson was a foreign policy novice.

Yes, Jackson had lived in the Muslim world. Yes, he’d studied and traveled extensively in the Muslim world. Yes, Jackson believed he was an expert on Islam, but David could see the man was in way over his head. Despite years of hard evidence to the contrary, Jackson still believed he could negotiate with Tehran, just as the US had done with the nuclear-armed Soviet Empire for decades. He still believed economic sanctions could prove effective. He still believed the US could contain or deter a nuclear Iran. But the president was dead wrong.